"novel ""American Gods"". In the 1945 John Steinbeck novel ""Sweet Thursday"", the titular day is preceded by ""Lousy Wednesday"". Wednesday is sometimes informally referred to as ""hump day"" in North America, a reference to the fact that Wednesday is the middle day—or ""hump""—of a typical work week. The astrological sign of the planet Mercury, ☿, represents Wednesday—""Dies Mercurii"" to the Romans, it had similar names in Latin-derived languages, such as the Italian ""mercoledì"" (""dì"" means ""day""), the French ""mercredi"", and the Spanish ""miércoles"". In English, this became ""Woden's Day"", since the Roman god Mercury was identified by Woden in Northern"
"English days of the week were inherited from gods of the old Germanic Norse culture — Wednesday is ""Wōden""’s-day (""Wōden"" or ""Wettin"" eqv. Mercury), Thursday is ""Thor""’s-day (Thor eqv. Jupiter), Friday is ""Frige""-day (Frig eqv. Venus). It can be correlated that the Norse gods were attributed to each Roman planet and its god, probably due to Roman influence rather than coincidentally by the naming of the planets. In alchemy, each classical planet (Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn) was associated with one of the seven metals known to the classical world (silver, mercury/quicksilver, copper, gold, iron, tin and"
"Wednesday Wednesday is the day of the week between Tuesday and Thursday. According to international standard ISO 8601 it is the third day of the week. In countries that use the ""Sunday-last"" convention and in the Jewish Hebrew calendar Wednesday is defined as the third day of the week. The name is derived from Old English ""Wōdnesdæg"" and Middle English ""Wednesdei"", ""day of Woden"", reflecting the pre-Christian religion practiced by the Anglo-Saxons, a variation of the Norse god Odin. In other languages, such as the French ""mercredi"" or Italian ""mercoledì"", the day's name is a calque of ""dies Mercurii"" ""day"
"Europe and it is especially aligned by the astrological signs of Gemini and Virgo. Wednesday is one of the only three days aside from Neptune and Pluto to be associated by another planet, which is Uranus. Wednesday Wednesday is the day of the week between Tuesday and Thursday. According to international standard ISO 8601 it is the third day of the week. In countries that use the ""Sunday-last"" convention and in the Jewish Hebrew calendar Wednesday is defined as the third day of the week. The name is derived from Old English ""Wōdnesdæg"" and Middle English ""Wednesdei"", ""day of Woden"","
"Nodens Nodens (Nudens, Nodons) is a Celtic deity associated with healing, the sea, hunting and dogs. He was worshipped in ancient Britain, most notably in a temple complex at Lydney Park in Gloucestershire, and possibly also in Gaul. He is equated with the Roman gods Mars, Neptune and Silvanus, and his name is cognate with that of the Irish mythological figure Nuada and the Welsh Nudd. The name ""Nodens"" probably derives from a Celtic stem *""noudont-"" or ""*noudent-"", which J. R. R. Tolkien suggested was related to a Germanic root ""*neut-"" meaning ""acquire, have the use of"", earlier ""to catch,"
"derive from Latin, days of the week still preserve the names of the original Roman deities, such as the Italian for Tuesday, ""martedì"" (from the Latin ""Martis dies""). This is also the case with Saturn in some West Germanic languages; such as the English ""Saturday"", the West Frisian """", the Low German """" and the Dutch """" all meaning Saturn's day. Simek emphasizes the paucity of evidence and notes that comparison with Roman gods is insufficient to reconstruct ancient Germanic gods and equate them definitively with those of later Norse mythology. The following is a list of Greek, Roman, Etruscan,"
"other heathen deity"". Place names containing ""Wodnes-"" or ""Wednes-"" as their first element have been interpreted as references to Woden, and as a result his name is often seen as the basis for such place names as Woodnesborough (""Woden's Barrow"") in Kent, Wansdyke (""Woden's Dyke"") in Wiltshire, and Wensley (""Woden's Woodland Clearing"" or ""Woden's Wood"") in Derbyshire. The name Woden also appears as an ancestor of the royal genealogies of Kent, Wessex, East Anglia and Mercia, resulting in suggestions that after losing his status as a god during the Christianisation process he was euhemerised as a royal ancestor. Woden also"
"religious practices associated with the god. This multitude of names makes Odin the god with the most names known among the Germanic peoples. The modern English weekday name ""Wednesday"" derives from Old English ""wōdnesdæg"". Cognate terms are found in other Germanic languages, such as Middle Low German ""wōdensdach"" (Dutch ""woensdag""), and Old Norse ""Óðinsdagr"" (Danish, Norwegian and Swedish ""Onsdag""). All of these terms derive from Proto-Germanic *""Wodensdag"", itself a Germanic interpretation of Latin ""Dies Mercurii"" (""Day of Mercury""). In Old High German, the name derived from Odin's was replaced by a translation of Church Latin ""media hebdomas"" ('middle of the"
"it is ""e Marta"". The English word ""Tuesday"" derives from Old English ""Tiwesdæg"" and means ""Tiw's Day"", ""Tiw"" being the Old English form of the Proto-Germanic war god *Tîwaz, or Týr in Norse. In Classical Roman religion, Mars was invoked under several titles, and the first Roman emperor Augustus thoroughly integrated Mars into Imperial cult. The 4th-century Latin historian Ammianus Marcellinus treats Mars as one of several classical Roman deities who remained ""cultic realities"" up to his own time. Mars, and specifically Mars Ultor, was among the gods who received sacrifices from Julian, the only emperor to reject Christianity after"
"god of war and leader of the Wild Hunt. The Wild Hunt was retold in Dutch with Wodan leading under different guises: ""Gait with his dogs; Derk with his dogs; Derk with his boar; the glowing horse; Henske with his dogs.""). Donar is Dutch for Thor the god of thunder. In Dutch the days of the week are named for Germanic gods, a custom derived from parallel Roman practice. Note that the following days were named through Roman influence, because the Romans found them to be (roughly) equivalent to their Roman deities: However other ancient deities are Druidic, Celtic and"
"""xoves"" and Romanian ""joi"". This is also reflected in the p-Celtic Welsh ""dydd Iau"". The astrological and astronomical sign of the planet Jupiter (♃) is sometimes used to represent Thursday. Since the Roman god Jupiter was identified with Thunor (Norse Thor in northern Europe), most Germanic languages name the day after this god: ""Torsdag"" in Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish, ""Hósdagur""/""Tórsdagur"" in Faroese, ""Donnerstag"" in German or ""Donderdag"" in Dutch. Finnish and Northern Sami, both non-Germanic (Uralic) languages, uses the borrowing ""Torstai"" and ""Duorastat"". In the extinct Polabian Slavic language, it was ""perundan"", Perun being the Slavic equivalent of Thor. There"
"of Woden or Oden""). Budha is part of the Navagraha in Hindu zodiac system, considered benevolent, associated with an agile mind and memory. The zodiac and naming system of Hindu astrology, with Budha as Mercury, likely developed in the centuries after the arrival of Greek astrology with Alexander the Great, their zodiac signs being nearly identical. Budha is also the root for name for the week day in many other Indian languages. In modern Hindi, Oriya, Telugu, Bengali, Marathi, Urdu, Kannada and Gujarati, Wednesday is called ""Budhavara""; Tamil: ""Budhan kizhamai""; Malayalam: ""Budhanazhcha""; Thai: ""Wan Phut"" (). Budha's iconography, according to"
"Roman incarnation of Mars as both a god of agriculture and bloodshed. William Warde Fowler, whose work on Roman festivals remains a standard reference, entertained the idea that Robigus is an ""indigitation"" of Mars, that is, a name to be used in a prayer formulary to fix the local action of the invoked god. In support of this idea, the priest who presided was the flamen Quirinalis, and the ""ludi"" were held for both Mars and Robigo. The flamen recited a prayer that Ovid quotes at length in the ""Fasti"", his six-book calendar poem on Roman holidays which provides the"
"which is the Dutch pet name for Kate, or Katharine..."" The story outlines the following traditional beliefs in Holland: Wodan (Mentioned here as ""God of Sun"") is the deity the Dutch shared with other Germanic people, Dutch name for Odin. Wednesday is named after him; Holland is from the phrase ""Holt Land"" which means ""Land of Many Trees"". The tale says the land was once covered with forests and people lived in the trees for a ""thousand years"" until they became an agricultural people. In fact, the trees kept the land firm otherwise it would melt or disappear under water"
"week'), hence modern German ""Mittwoch"". The earliest records of the Germanic peoples were recorded by the Romans, and in these works Odin is frequently referred to—via a process known as (where characteristics perceived to be similar by Romans result in identification of a non-Roman god as a Roman deity)—as the Roman god Mercury. The first clear example of this occurs in the Roman historian Tacitus's late 1st-century work , where, writing about the religion of the (a confederation of Germanic peoples), he comments that ""among the gods Mercury is the one they principally worship. They regard it as a religious"
"day by Sun (25th hour), followed by Moon (49th hour), Mars, Mercury, Jupiter and Venus. Because each day was named by the god that started it, this is also the order of the days of the week in the Roman calendar after the Nundinal cycle was rejected – and still preserved in many modern languages. In English, ""Saturday, Sunday,"" and ""Monday"" are straightforward translations of these Roman names. The other days were renamed after ""Tiw"" (Tuesday), ""Wóden"" (Wednesday), ""Thunor"" (Thursday), and ""Fríge"" (Friday), the Anglo-Saxon gods considered similar or equivalent to Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, and Venus, respectively. Earth is the"
"of the Germans as Mercury, perhaps referring to Wotan. Some information about the deities of the ancient Gauls (the continental Celts), who left no written literature other than inscriptions, is preserved by Greco-Roman sources under the names of Greek and Latin equivalents. A large number of Gaulish theonyms or cult titles are preserved, for instance, in association with Mars. As with some Greek and Roman divine counterparts, the perceived similarities between a Gallic and a Roman or Greek deity may reflect a common Indo-European origin. Lugus was identified with Mercury, Nodens with Mars as healer and protector, Sulis with Minerva."
"the Roman syncretism, Mercury was equated with the Celtic god Lugus, and in this aspect was commonly accompanied by the Celtic goddess Rosmerta. Although Lugus may originally have been a deity of light or the sun (though this is disputed), similar to the Roman Apollo, his importance as a god of trade made him more comparable to Mercury, and Apollo was instead equated with the Celtic deity Belenus. Romans associated Mercury with the Germanic god Wotan, by ""interpretatio Romana""; 1st-century Roman writer Tacitus identifies him as the chief god of the Germanic peoples. Mercury is known to the Romans as"
"outer deity, one of thirteen separate from God's Heaven and Hell, and as ruler of a realm known as the Labyrinth. Keene's Nodens is the father to Pan, and the Labyrinth is the realm satyrs hail from in this work. John Lambshead's 2013 fantasy short story ""Haunts of Guilty Minds"" includes the God Nodens, also referred to as Nud, as a primary antagonist and villain. Nodens Nodens (Nudens, Nodons) is a Celtic deity associated with healing, the sea, hunting and dogs. He was worshipped in ancient Britain, most notably in a temple complex at Lydney Park in Gloucestershire, and possibly"
"Woden was equated with Mercury, the god of eloquence (among other things). The tales about the Norse god Odin tell how he gave one of his eyes in return for wisdom; he also won the mead of poetic inspiration. Luckily for Christian rune-masters, the Latin word could be substituted without ruining the sense, to keep the outward form of the rune name without obviously referring to Woden."" In the poem ""Solomon and Saturn"", ""Mercurius the Giant"" () is referred to as an inventor of letters. This may also be a reference to Odin, who is in Norse mythology the founder"
"comes from ""chéad"", ""first"" and ""aoine"", ""fasting"" which means ""first day of fasting"". In American culture many Catholic and Protestant churches schedule study or prayer meetings on Wednesday nights. The sports calendar in many American public schools reflects this, reserving Mondays and Thursdays for girls' games and Tuesdays and Fridays for boys' games while generally avoiding events on Wednesday evening. In Hindu mythology, Budha is the god of Mercury (planet), mid-week Wednesday, and of Merchants and merchandise. According to the Thai solar calendar, the color associated with Wednesday is green. In the folk rhyme ""Wednesday's child is full of woe"","
"gave his name to the third month in the Roman calendar, ""Martius"", from which English ""March"" derives. In the most ancient Roman calendar, ""Martius"" was the first month. The planet Mars was named for him, and in some allegorical and philosophical writings, the planet and the god are endowed with shared characteristics. In many languages, Tuesday is named for the planet Mars or the god of war: In Latin, ""martis dies"" (""Mars's Day""), survived in Romance languages as ""martes"" (Spanish), ""mardi"" (French), ""martedi"" (Italian), ""marţi"" (Romanian), and ""dimarts"" (Catalan). In Irish (Gaelic), the day is ""An Mháirt"", while in Albanian"
"inspired numerous works of art and references to Thor appear in modern popular culture. Like other Germanic deities, veneration of Thor is revived in the modern period in Heathenry. Old Norse (), Old English , Old High German , Old Saxon , and Old Frisian are cognates within the Germanic language branch, descending from the Proto-Germanic masculine noun 'thunder'. The name of the god is the origin of the weekday name ""Thursday"". By employing a practice known as during the Roman Empire period, the Germanic peoples adopted the Roman weekly calendar, and replaced the names of Roman gods with their"
"them into the Germanic holy grove and has Woden's second wolf join them. Thus the picture served — along with five other ones — to influence ""wyrd"", the fortune and fate of a warrior king. The myth has been an inspiration to artists throughout the ages. Particular focus has been paid to the rape of Ilia by Mars and the suckling of the twins by the she-wolf. In the late 16th century, the wealthy Magnani family from Bologna commissioned a series of artworks based on the Roman foundation myth. The artists contributing works included a sculpture of Hercules with the"
"had come to be associated with the hooden horse. She further noted that the medieval games devoted to Robin Hood all took place in May rather than at Christmas, as hoodening did. Cawte also criticised Maylam's argument, noting that there was no evidence of Morris dancing in Kent prior to the twentieth century, and that neither hoodening nor Robin Hood had a particularly close association with the Morris dance to start with. In 1807, an anonymous observer suggested that the term ""hoden"" was linked to the Anglo-Saxon god Woden, and that the tradition might be ""a relic of a festival"
"translation for the word ""deus"" of the Latin Bible was influenced by the then current usage by the tribes for their highest deity, namely ""Wodan"" by Angles, Saxons, and Franks of north-central and western Europe, and ""Godan"" by the Lombards of south-central Europe around Rome. There are many instances where the name Godan and Wodan are contracted to God and Wod. One instance is the wild hunt (a.k.a. Wodan's wild hunt) where Wod is used. The earliest uses of the word God in Germanic writing is often cited to be in the Gothic Bible or Wulfila Bible, which is the"
"Thursday Thursday is the day of the week between Wednesday and Friday. According to the ISO 8601 international standard, it is the fourth day of the week. ""See Names of the days of the week for more on naming conventions. "" The name is derived from Old English ""Þūnresdæg"" and Middle English ""Thuresday"" (with loss of -n-, first in northern dialects, from influence of Old Norse ""Þorsdagr"") meaning ""Thor's Day"". It was named after the Norse god of Thunder, Thor. ""Thunor, Donar"" (German, ""Donnerstag"") and ""Thor"" are derived from the name of the Germanic god of thunder, ""Thunraz"", equivalent to"
"the day of the Thunderer in many traditions: compare Polabian ""Peräune-dǻn"" (""day of Perun""), Lithuanian ""Perkūno diena"". Perkūnas is associated with the Roman god Jupiter in early sources. Thursday is a day of thunder-storms and rains, and also of weddings. Simon Grunau (around 1520) describes a Prussian banner with Perkūns on it. The god is represented as an angry middle aged man with a twisted black beard, topped with a flame. It stands between young Patrimpas and old Patulas. Perkūns maintains the same central position in the description of the sacred oak in Romowe sanctuary. In front of the oak,"
"Neptune (mythology) Neptune ( ) was the god of freshwater and the sea in Roman religion. He is the counterpart of the Greek god Poseidon. In the Greek-influenced tradition, Neptune was the brother of Jupiter and Pluto; the brothers presided over the realms of Heaven, the earthly world, and the Underworld. Salacia was his wife. Depictions of Neptune in Roman mosaics, especially those of North Africa, are influenced by Hellenistic conventions. Neptune was likely associated with fresh water springs before the sea. Like Poseidon, Neptune was worshipped by the Romans also as a god of horses, under the name ""Neptunus"
"at the entrance to a small shrine. Cocidius In Romano-British religion, Cocidius was a deity worshipped in northern Britain. The Romans equated him with Mars, god of war and hunting, and also with Silvanus, god of forests, groves and wild fields. Like Belatucadros, he was probably worshipped by lower-ranked Roman soldiers as well as by the Britons for whom he was probably a tribal god - a genius loci. Rivet and Smith note that the name may be related to British Celtic ""cocco-"", 'red', suggesting that statues of the god might have been painted red:. the figure discovered in the"
"gods Mars and Quirinus, who were often identified with each other. Mars was a god of war; he was honored in March and October. Modern scholars see Quirinus as the patron of the armed community in time of peace. The 19th-century scholar Georg Wissowa thought that the Romans distinguished two classes of gods, the ""di indigetes"" and the ""di novensides"" or ""novensiles"": the ""indigetes"" were the original gods of the Roman state, their names and nature indicated by the titles of the earliest priests and by the fixed festivals of the calendar, with 30 such gods honored by special festivals;"
"the son of Woden is called not ""Bealdor"" but ""Baldag"" (Saxon) and ""Bældæg, Beldeg"" (Anglo-Saxon), which shows association with ""day"", possibly with Day personified as a deity. This, as Grimm points out, would agree with the meaning ""shining one, white one, a god"" derived from the meaning of Baltic ""baltas"", further adducing Slavic ""Belobog"" and German ""Berhta"". Grimm's etymology is endorsed by modern research. According to Rudolf Simek, the original name for Baldr must be understood as 'shining day'. One of the two Merseburg Incantations names ""Baldere"", but also mentions a figure named ""Phol"", considered to be a byname for"
"in succession, over the hours of the day. The association of the weekdays with the respective deities is thus indirect, the days are named for the planets, which were in turn named for the deities. The Germanic peoples adapted the system introduced by the Romans but glossed their indigenous gods over the Roman deities in a process known as ""interpretatio germanica"". In the case of Saturday, however, the Roman name was borrowed directly by West Germanic peoples, apparently because none of the Germanic gods were considered to be counterparts of the Roman god Saturn. Otherwise Old Norse and Old High"